


The Art of Baby-sitting

by Raissa_Baiard



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 04:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21368254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raissa_Baiard/pseuds/Raissa_Baiard
Summary: Timeframe:Saga, 3 ABYSynopsis:Sabine finds out that babysitting is not as easy as she thinks when she has to watch young Jacen Syndulla.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The Art of Baby-sitting

“...there’s beebleberries, crackers and blue milk for his snack and he goes to bed at 19:00…”

“Hera, I’ve got this.” Sabine sighed. Honestly, this was the fourth time they’d been over these instructions. And she thought Hera was thorough when she drilled Phoenix Squadron on battle plans, but General Syndulla had nothing on Hera in mother avian mode “I’ve fought Imperials, flown fighters, built superweapons, and learned to use the Darksaber...I think I’m capable of looking after one little boy.”

Zeb snorted. “Heh, you say that now, but by the time we get back, you’ll be singing a different tune,” he muttered, earning a So Not Amused, Don’t Talk About My Youngling That Way look from Hera. He could be such a drama gualama when it came to babysitting. To hear him tell it, a single two-year-old was more trouble than an entire squad of stormtroopers. And it probably was for Zeb, since his usual method of dealing with troopers was just to bash their heads together until they were all on the floor. 

Sabine, on the other hand, was going into this armed with a plan. Tactics were important in any battle, and hers were all about keeping Jacen so occupied that he couldn’t get into trouble. She had just just the thing, too, because younglings loved art. They were so expressive and creative, unencumbered by preconceived notions of what art should be. She’d gotten crayons, markers, fingerpaints—every medium a youngling could want! Jacen was going to have the opportunity to express himself however he wanted to; she couldn’t wait to see what he came up with. It was going to be brilliant! She ruffled the boy’s emerald green hair. “We’re going to have lots of fun, aren’t we, Jacen?” 

He grinned up at her. “Uh-huh, Aunt ’Bine!” 

It was so cute when he called her that. Anyone else would get, as Zeb liked to say, thumped for using that particular nickname. “See? We’ll be fine, just go!” Sabine ushered Hera and Zeb down the ramp. She had this, absolutely. She had a plan, she had Chopper for backup and she’d even brushed up on her field medicine, just in case. She was so in control. She picked up her art caddy and a stack of flimsi as she headed back to the common area. “Hey, kiddo, come over here and let’s make some pictures for Mama to hang on the conservator!” 

Jacen hardly glanced at her as he crawled up on the acceleration couch. “No.”

Sabine set her art supplies on the console with a thud. “What?” 

“Wanna play with the monssers!”

“Monssers?” Sabine puzzled over this for a minute. “You mean monsters?

“Yeah, table monssers!” Jacen agreed enthusiastically. He shaped his pudgy hands into miniature claws and made a face that was about as scary as a puffed-up Loth-kitten.”Rawr, rawr!”

“Chopper, what is he talking about?”

“Bwah.” The droid waved a grasper. “Bwah bwa’bwahbwop bwahbwaah!”

“Oh, the dejarik table… “ Table monsters...Sabine supposed that kind of made sense. This wasn’t part of her plan, but she didn’t want to stifle Jacen’s imagination by putting too many rules, too many have-tos and and can’ts, in place. Flexibility and spontaneity were virtues for every artist. “Well, okay, I guess we can play for a little while.”

Jacen had already turned on the game’s holoprojector and was crawling between the game pieces, growling “ferociously.” He moved them around without any regard to the rules, and the monsters vocally protested this misuse, springing instantly back to their squares. Jacen seemed to find this hilarious, giggling between rawrs and chomps. “I the biggest monsser!” he announced, standing up on the table. “RAWR!"

“Jacen, I don’t think you should—” Sabine began, but it was too late. The little boy stomped once, missed the edge of the table, toppled over backwards onto the acceleration couch with a thunk and began to wail. 

“Okay...” Sabine picked him up—carefully so as not to get hit by his flailing feet—and set him upright on the couch. She felt a bit out of her depth as Jacen continued to sob. Her mother would have given her a cursory once over and told her to go play—Mandalorians didn’t whine over a little bump. What he needed was something to take his mind off things. She grabbed her art supplies from the communication console. “I’ve got an idea—why don’t you draw some of your...uh, table monsters?”

“I can’t!” he sniffled. “You draw!”

“Let’s do it together.” She selected a couple markers from her caddy and set them in front of him, along with a sheet of flimsi for him and one for her. She picked up the blue marker and started sketching the Mantellian savrip. “See, it’s fun!

Jacen considered her drawing for a moment, then chose a purple marker and started working on his own flimsi, rawr-ing softly as he drew. After a minute of mad scribbling, he held up his drawing. “Ta-dah!”

Sabine took the flimsi—How exciting! Jacen was taking his first steps on the path to being an artist!—and blinked. The tangle of lines scrawled on the page didn’t resemble anything she could name, especially not any of the dejarik pieces. A tree with knotted branches? A five-speeder crash? A pile of bantha hair? It could have been any of them, or none of them. She smiled and took a wild guess. “That's a great...k’lorr slug!”

He stared back at her. “It you, Aunt Bine! See?”

“Oh...yeah.” It was supposed to be her? Well, maybe if she squinted really hard and looked at it sideways… That big purple spot might be her head. Maybe. “There’s my...hair… Wow.” For once, Sabine felt herself at a loss to offer a proper critique on a piece of art. She supposed the best thing she could do was encourage him; it was important not crush his fledgling artistic spirit. What would her Dad have said to her at this age? “It’s very...unique. You have a great vision, Jacen. Nice use of abstract form, good rhythm to your lines.”

Now properly inspired, Jacen grabbed another sheet of flimsi and began jabbing at it with the red marker, obviously a primitive experiment in pointillism. Sabine winced as she watched him make the red blotches. “Ooh, hey, don’t push so hard, you’ll break the...tip.” Once again, too late. The marker’s felt tip cracked and separated into a flattened mass of strands. Jacen giggled as red ink dribbled onto the flimsi. It was an interesting effect, Sabine thought, and yet… leaking markers and toddlers seemed like an accident waiting to happen. Even though she hated to impose conditions on his creativity, she gently disengaged the marker from his hand. “It’s okay, we’ve got plenty of other markers. I’ll just put this one up so you don’t make a mess.” She managed to fit the cap back on the mangled tip, turned to set the marker on the console…

And heard a gagging sound behind her.

When Sabine turned back, Jacen was holding half a green crayon and spitting bits of wax onto the dejarik table. “Jacen! You don’t _eat_ the crayons!” She smothered a sigh of frustration and rummaged in the drawers beneath the couch until she found a box of flimsi-tissues. Jacen wriggled as she wiped the mess off his mouth. “I guess this means it’s time for your snack, huh? You keep drawing, I’ll be right back.”

As Hera had mentioned—repeatedly—there was a carton of beebleberries and a jug of bantha milk in the conservator and a box of organic, cheese-flavored giju crackers on the counter. Sabine pulled out a plasti-form toddler plate decorated with smiling banthas and put some of the berries and crackers on it. The deep purple of the beebleberies contrasted nicely with the pale orange of the crackers, she noted, and she decided to arrange them in concentric circles on the plate. Food should be visually stimulating as well as nutritious.

“BWAAAAAAAH!” Chopper’s indignant cry interrupted Sabine as she fanned out the crackers.

“What’s going on?”

“I painting Chopper now!” Jacen called back gleefully.

Sabine smiled—listen to how happy he was! Her plan was working! He must be really taking to art if he was painting pictures independently. “That’s great, kiddo! I’m sure your mom will love that!” She finished her careful snack arrangement and poured the blue milk in his sippy-cup, ignoring Chopper’s protests that she needed to get out there _right now_. The droid was as over-dramatic as Zeb sometimes. Art could get a little messy, but that was okay, it was art, after all!

She returned to the common area, plate and cup in hand “Let’s see your painting…” The lovingly arranged snack plate clattered out of her hand; berries rolled all over the floor. “Jacen Jarrus Syndulla! What did you do?!”

The toddler grinned triumphantly. “I paint Chopper!”

He had indeed painted Chopper. The droid was streaked with red, blue and yellow fingerpaints from his dome to his leg struts, and Jacen had managed to completely cover his optical receptor with a particularly large blob of blue paint. Chopper unleashed a stream of invective that really was not fit for a child’s ears at Sabine, gesticulating forcefully in Jacen’s direction.

In the process of painting Chopper, Jacen had also painted himself, the dejarik table and the floor. The bottle of red paint had tipped over and was dripping onto the acceleration couch. The yellow had rolled under the communication console, leaving a trail of paint behind it, and the blue....had Jacen emptied it over his own head?!? Sabine stared at the scene in front of her. She’d been out of the room for five minutes— how in the name of the Mandalore had one small child wreaked so much havoc in such a short time?

She sighed, leaning against the console. The dull thud of a headache was beginning to pulse behind her temples. She was going to have to clean this all up before Zeb and Hera got back. “All right,” she told herself, taking a deep breath and swallowing several colorful Mandalorian curses. “First things first. I’m going to pick up all these berries, and then you, young man, are getting a bath.”

“Baff?” Jacen looked up from where he was happily making handprints across the floor. “NOOOOOOO!”

——

The _Ghost_ was eerily quiet when Zeb and Hera returned. Zeb raised a brow ridge to himself as Hera went to Jacen’s cabin to check on him. Maybe Sabine had done a better job with the kid than he’d expected. Maybe her great, artistic plan had worked after all...or maybe not. 

Zeb found her slumped on the acceleration couch. Her hair was hanging in limp, wet tendrils and there were smudges of fingerpaint on her face, her pants, her beskar’kandar—pretty much everywhere. She looked like she’d been trample by a herd of wild bantha—twice. A hydro-mop and a pile of towels were next to the couch, and they, too, were covered in paint. He couldn’t help grinning. “So whaddaya say about babysitting one little boy now?”

Sabine raised her head. “I am so never having younglings.”

“Told ya,” Zeb chuckled. “Come on, I’ll make you some Hoth chocolate.”

“Corellian style?”

“Oh yeah, you deserve it.” He punched her lightly on the shoulder and smiled. “But, hey, look at it this way—looks like the kid had a great time. I bet Hera will want you to babysit more often!”


End file.
